House Bill 1892, which passed with two dissenting votes and was sent to the Senate, would give the Harris County Toll Road Authority first shot at developing any new toll projects on state-owned right of way in the county.

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett and Commissioner El Franco Lee testified for the bill. Another boon for the county, Emmett said later, is that any payments generated by a toll project would be spent on road or clean-air projects in the same TxDOT district or an adjoining one.

The bill also says the fact that a county is earning revenue from a toll project cannot affect its share of state highway funding.

And if local officials and the regional planning agency (here, the Houston-Galveston Area Council) determine that a local toll project is needed, TxDOT must allow use of land for free.

Gov. Rick Perry criticized the moratorium, but his spokeswoman, Krista Moody, said Perry "thinks local authorities should have a strong say in how local projects should be built."

Making a long connection

Last week,
Andy Taylor
, a lawyer representing an opponent of light rail on Richmond Avenue who is suing the transit agency, blamed Metro for the possibility that the Center Serving Persons with Mental Retardation may have to move from city-owned property near River Oaks.

If the connection is not obvious, consider:

•City officials have declared the facility's 99-year lease invalid and are considering selling the land.

•Metro is committed under a referendum approved by voters in 2003 to send 25 percent of its 1-cent sales tax to local governments in its service area to pay for streets, stoplights and other mobility uses. Houston's share of that is about 18 cents per dollar, with the other seven cents split among the county and 14 smaller cities.

Taylor's conclusion: The city may need to sell the land "simply because Metro has failed to pay the money that was due the city of Houston."

"Rather than kick out the center for the mentally retarded," he said, "why don't you turn to Metro and get paid the money they promised they would pay?"

"We're talking about tens and hundreds of millions of dollars," he said.

"If Metro has nothing to hide, they should voluntarily submit to answering questions under oath, without the necessity of court intervention."

Michel and the city's deputy public works director, Susan Bandy, said that unlike some of the smaller cities, Houston does not receive lump-sum payments from Metro but is reimbursed quarterly for mobility-related work.

The system, which Bandy said was spelled out in a contract with Metro that White inherited, helps prevent the mobility dollars from being spent for unrelated purposes, as has happened in the past.

It also means that for any given period, payments may total more or less than exactly 18 percent.

The quarterly invoices and payments average $10 million to $12 million, she said, with the amount depending on how much mobility work the city undertakes during the period.

In 2005, she said, Houston's share — on paper — of Metro's tax revenue was $51.5 million, so a gap of several million dollars between the two may occur in a given year.

Bandy denied that the city is going easy on Metro by under-billing on mobility work.

"We look for ways to accelerate the Metro jobs," she said. "And we eventually get every penny."